After the 1908 Revolution he returned to the Ottoman Empire and headed up the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) branch in the Istanbul district of Pangaltı.

He exposed and opposed the CUP's Turkist programme and its desire to mobilise all available means to assimilate or Turkify the empire's non Turkish nations.

[2] After the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the CUP actually wanted to sentence to death for his opposition to their views, but Şerif Pasha was aware that the situation was difficult for him and he fled into exile abroad before he could be apprehended.

[4] In 1908, he co-founded the Kurd Society for Cooperation and Progress in Constantinople together with Emin Ali Bedir Khan and Abdulkadir Ubeydullah.

[6] Due to his oppositional stances, the CUP accused him of being involved into the murder of the former Ottoman Grand Vizier Mahmud Shevket Pasha.

[6] Sherif officially defected from the Ottoman side, and was elected president of the Kurdish delegation at the Paris Peace Conference by the Society for the Elevation of Kurdistan[8] (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti) and as well at the Treaty of Sèvres.

He moved to Cairo, where he had a property, which he received through the marriage with a member of the Khedivian family,[6] Emine Halim, an aunt to King Faruk.